What is the correct copyright statement?

[Geoffrey Winn <ge...@googlemail.com>]

Looking at the existing source file (C++ in my case) they all seem to
contain a copyright statement as follows.

"Copyright 2005 The Apache Software Foundation or its licensors, as
applicable."

If I want to create a new file do I include that exact statement or the 2006
variant of it?

Similarly, if I modify an existing file, do I need to modify the copyright
line.

Apologies for making an issue of this, but in a previous life I spent
several days dealing with lawyers over what constituted a "correct"
copyright statement.

Regards,

Geoff.

Re: What is the correct copyright statement?

[Pete Robbins <ro...@googlemail.com>]

ooh that's an interesting one an I will defer to the legal folk if any turn
up ... but... I believe the format is

"Copyright %START_DATE%, %LAST_MODIFIED_DATE% The Apache Software Foundation
or its licensors, as applicable."

So should probably read "Copyright 2005, 2006 The Apache Software Foundation
or its licensors, as
applicable."




On 12/05/06, Geoffrey Winn <ge...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> Looking at the existing source file (C++ in my case) they all seem to
> contain a copyright statement as follows.
>
> "Copyright 2005 The Apache Software Foundation or its licensors, as
> applicable."
>
> If I want to create a new file do I include that exact statement or the
> 2006
> variant of it?
>
> Similarly, if I modify an existing file, do I need to modify the copyright
> line.
>
> Apologies for making an issue of this, but in a previous life I spent
> several days dealing with lawyers over what constituted a "correct"
> copyright statement.
>
> Regards,
>
> Geoff.
>
>


-- 
Pete

Re: What is the correct copyright statement?

[Jeremy Boynes <jb...@apache.org>]

IANAL but AIUI the copyright notice should reflect the dates of
significant contributions to the work. So for the new file it must
contain the current year, for the modification the notice should be
changed if your new contribution is significant. The definition of
significant, of course, varies by lawyer :-)

FWIW I have a code template that attaches an appropriate notice to new
files and I try to remember to update the notice for files that I am
actively modifying. I do not believe changes to other files as a result
of automatic refactoring (e.g. in response to a method rename) count as
significant contribution and so would not update their dates.

For the lawyers, the full history is available from SVN. It makes life
much easier for us all if all parts of a change are committed together.
This is one of the big advantages of SVN over CVS as it maintains
history across the tree rather than by file.

No apologies needed, ensuring appropriate IP oversight is a critical
part of participation in an Apache project.

--
Jeremy

Geoffrey Winn wrote:
> Looking at the existing source file (C++ in my case) they all seem to
> contain a copyright statement as follows.
> 
> "Copyright 2005 The Apache Software Foundation or its licensors, as
> applicable."
> 
> If I want to create a new file do I include that exact statement or the
> 2006
> variant of it?
> 
> Similarly, if I modify an existing file, do I need to modify the copyright
> line.
> 
> Apologies for making an issue of this, but in a previous life I spent
> several days dealing with lawyers over what constituted a "correct"
> copyright statement.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Geoff.
>